Maud (Part II) - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
A Descent into Grief and Self-Exile
[Excerpt from Part II]
Birds in the high Hall-garden
When twilight was falling,
Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,
They were crying and calling.
Where was Maud? in our wood;
And I—who else?—was with her
Gathering woodland lilies,
Myriads blow together.
Birds in our wood sang
Ringing thro' the valleys;
Maud is here, here, here
In among the lilies.
I kiss’d her slender hand,
She took the kiss sedately;
Maud is not seventeen,
But she is tall and stately.
(…)
Dead, long dead,
Long dead!
And my heart is a handful of dust,
And the wheels go over my head,
And my bones are shaken with pain,
For into a shallow grave they are thrust,
Only a yard beneath the street,
And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat,
Beat into my scalp and my brain,
With never an end to the stream of passing feet.
[Public Domain: Excerpted for brevity from “Maud” (Part II) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.]
In Part II of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Maud,” the speaker’s fraught psychological landscape becomes even more turbulent than in Part I. Having killed Maud’s brother in a duel at the close of Part I, the speaker endures profound guilt and obsession, interwoven with an unwavering fixation on Maud herself. These stanzas capture a dreamlike, hallucinatory quality—images of flowers, haunting birdsong, and the repeated echo of Maud’s name intermingle with grim reflections on death. Tennyson intensifies the emotional pitch through abrupt tonal shifts: the romantic innocence of “gathering woodland lilies” turns to horrifying visions of graves and a “handful of dust.”
Formally, the poem continues to shift across varied metrical and stanzaic patterns, mirroring the speaker’s oscillations between rapture and despair. The earlier hints of madness now take hold more explicitly, as the speaker imagines or experiences half-reality, half-nightmare. Guilt, unfulfilled desire, and social ostracism converge, underscoring his deepening alienation. Tennyson juxtaposes pastoral elements (birdsong, woodland scenes) against unsettling images (hooves pounding overhead, bones shaken with pain) to portray the speaker’s psyche as tormented by the contrast between lost hope and grim reality.
While “Maud” as a whole can be read as a commentary on Victorian society’s constraints—such as rigid class divisions, economic anxieties, and the potential for violence—Part II focuses intensely on the speaker’s personal crisis. In this section, Tennyson shows how love, transgression, and remorse can plunge an unstable mind into a near-surreality, setting the stage for the speaker’s further unraveling and eventual reckoning that follows in Part III.
Key points
• Intensifies the dramatic conflict after the fatal duel at the close of Part I.
• Blends pastoral imagery (lilies, woodland birds) with harrowing visions of death and guilt.
• Reflects Tennyson’s interest in psychological depth and the fragility of the human mind.
• Demonstrates how the speaker’s remorse and obsession deepen his detachment from social norms.
• Sets the stage for the poem’s concluding section, where the speaker must face the consequences of violence and isolation.
